Hello Dick,
I bet you knew I would respond to this.
You wrote: In what manner are we, his stumbling creatures, like the Most High
God? Do we possess His holiness, or His righteousness? Can we boast of His
wisdom? Are we omnipotent? Can we transcend time? Is it in our power to
forgive sin? Can we grant immortality? No, we mere mortals presume too
much.
Can't we ask the same things about Adam?
You say Adam was created in God's image and that no human being before him or
after him, except Jesus Christ, was so created. But I see Adam as a man just
like us. He was created with the ability to sin and, evidently, the
propensity to sin. For sin he did. You say God created Adam to serve as his
representative to bring a knowledge of God to a world of ungodly men. But
certainly God knew from the beginning the outcome. That being the case, He
could have only created Adam as some sort of demonstration, to illustrate a
point, to teach a lesson.
I say Adam was created by God, not as God's representative to man, but as
man's representative to God. Adam was a man just like us. The only difference
being that he was put into a paradise, without a problem in the world. So
when he sinned he couldn't rightly blame his failings on his tough lot in
life. Adam's failure in paradise proved that none of us, with all of our
problems, stresses and temptations, can ever live a perfectly righteous life.
Adam proved that all mankind, though created in God's image in a limited way,
are not nearly as righteous as God, since unlike God we have both the ability
and the propensity to sin. Adam proved that because we all "fall short of the
glory of God," we are all unworthy of eternal life. Adam proved that because
we are, we all need God's forgiveness, which He freely offers to us all by
means of the shed blood of Jesus Christ.
The questions you asked to prove that sinful predamic men and postadamic men
could not possibly be the ones that Gen. 1:27 is referring to as having been
created in God's image I'll now ask you about Adam.
In what manner was Adam, His stumbling creature, like the Most High God? Did
Adam possess His holiness, or His righteousness? Could Adam boast of His
wisdom? Was Adam omnipotent? Could Adam transcend time? Was it in Adam's
power to forgive sin? Could Adam grant immortality?
If you maintain that Adam was any more created in God's image than his
contemporary Sumerian neighbors, and all of us living today, I think you
presume too much for Adam.
Mike
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